Generating reports and collecting data in complex technology areas is always difficult. There may be a loss of data and this may easily be placed in the wrong column or row. Also if the person generating the report or collecting the data is conducting analysis or reviewing data inputs this can add further difficulties.
One technical area where there are particular issues is the field of petrology. A geoscientist studying rock samples will have to carry out very detailed studies generating huge amounts of data. The accuracy of this data when being collected will be difficult.
In petrology the data collected includes data relating to the composition, origin, structure, and formation of rocks. The branch of petrology concerned with the description and classification of rocks is called petrography.
Petrography is the examination of rocks in this section. Rock slices can be glued to a glass slide and the rock ground to 0.03 mm thickness in order to observe mineralogy and texture using for example a transmitted light petrographic microscope. Samples of sedimentary rock can be impregnated with blue epoxy to highlight porosity, which is the percentage of pore volume, void space, or the volume within rock that can contain fluids.
Micro paleontology is the study of micro fossils of which the majority is too small to be seen without the use of a microscope. Marine micro fossils such as foraminifera are important for stratigraphic correlation.
Palynology is the study of pollen and spores of plants. Changes in the Earth through time can be documented by observing changes in the fossils in successive strata and the environments in which pollen or spores were formed or preserved. Fossils can also be compared with their extant relatives to assess evolutionary changes. Correlations of strata can be aided by studying their fossil content.
A core is a cylindrical sample of rock retrieved from a bore. The average core length is often 60 feet and is generally stored in almost twenty 3-foot long trays. To analyze these core samples a geologist will start with a sheet of paper that contains the core depth in the first column. There are certain categories of columns that could be filled. Each category consists of subcategories that in some cases could add up to 100% more data.
In certain methods of operating, the geologist may use a camera and a petrographic microscope as part of a geological workstation for capturing and verifying geoscientific data in for example a spread sheet.
Typically, a geologist will examine a thin section of the rock sample under the microscope and will manually record the data on paper for later manual input into a table. This table could be a printed sheet of paper or a computer-based spread sheet. There is obviously much room for error in this process.
In petrographic data capture most of the time of the geologist time is spent in going back and forth between the microscope and the paper, identifying minerals and sizes of grains and recording this data. This is also true in micro paleontology and palynology, where geologists have to look at the microscope to identify micro fossils.
In the example of petrographic data collection each record should contain the description of one thin section sample which represents the microscopic evaluation of the sample for mineral and fossil content of the sample and other petrographic properties.
The current way in which this data entry is performed require keyboard input and/or item selection via cursor control keys. There are currently two means or collecting petrographic data using only a microscope and using a microscope and camera.
In the case of the microscope only the geologist uses a transmitted-light petrographic microscope. The sample is divided into 4 zones. The zones are scanned as is shown in FIG. 1 to determine the contents. When a spread sheet of a rock sample description is to be produced, the data first have to be manually recorded in a draft report. The second phase is to create the final report by filling in either another final table or an electronic form displayed on a computer screen.
In the case of using a microscope and a camera connected to a PC, a geologist uses a transmitted-light petrographic microscope and a camera installed over the microscope to transmit the image to a computer screen. The counting is then done as above. When a spread sheet of a rock sample description is to be produced, the data can be directly filled into an electronic form displayed on a computer screen.
Speech recognition systems are sometimes used in the generation of structured reports and filling forms.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,051,924 (Method and Apparatus for the Generation of Reports), for example, discloses a general purpose apparatus for the generation of reports using a speech recognition system and a speech synthesizer to convert the text of the report to synthesized voice signals for storage and retrieval. More particularly, it relates to a system for storing and forwarding selected type of reports in the form of voice signals.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,465,378 (Report Generation System), also discloses a general report generation system which responds to selected user inputs for retrieving corresponding, previously defined report material and then compiles the retrieved material to form the report after the receipt of user inputs representing needed information.